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Handbag meets Baz Luhrmann

With Australia released on DVD on 27 April, we caught up with director Baz Luhrmann and spoke to him about his latest film, Nicole Kidman and, of course, the hunky Hugh Jackman...

Read all about handbag.com's ultimate outback experience, and meeting Baz at his Sydney home...

Day Two: Meet Baz
Waking early, as my body was still on English time, I got myself dressed and prepared myself for my meeting with the most-famed Australian director, Baz Luhrmann, and we weren't just meeting him - we were invited to visit his house in Sydney as well. There had been whispers throughout our group the evening before, "They have a red room with loads of memorabilia from his films," one lady said, "You can hold Catherine Martin's (Baz's wife) academy award - it's just out on the mantlepiece," exclaimed another. I could hardly contain my excitement. Tucked away in a tiny Australian suburb, we were made extremely welcome in Baz's dining room as I waited to have my chat with the acclaimed director of Moulin Rouge, Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet. I wandered into the Red Room to have a sneak peek at the Oscar statuettes on display, and had to stop myself from practising my Oscar acceptance speech with the award in my hand, and I gawped in amazement at the blue, flowery shirt that Leonardo DiCaprio wore in Romeo + Juliet on display against the wall. I couldn't get close enough! Baz himself was charming, confident and full of a passion for life and art and I think everyone had a crush on him by the day's end. You can watch my interview with him here. On our departure I asked him for some tips on surviving in the outback, and admitted that I'd been lifting toilet seats up when I went to the bathroom having been told that spiders live under the toilet seats in Australia when I was little - and I wasn't even in the outback yet. "I'm not going to lie to you," he smiled, "you're going to be careful where you sit in the outback - that's just common sense." After my interview I headed to Sydney's city centre to do some shopping, worried that my canvas pumps weren't going to cut it in the bush (what were they thinking sending someone from a website called handbag.com to one of the roughest terrains on earth?) After some shopping I was looking forward to sitting down with a nice glass of wine at dinner, which turned into a few glasses of wine at Sydney's Ivy, where we relaxed and mingled at the rooftop, poolside bar.